Don’t Make an Explainer Video Until You Read This!

More sales. Increased brand awareness. Higher rankings. Better engagement with your audience. With all those benefits, you might be wondering why didn’t you think of an explainer video for your company until now. It’s never too late to start reaping these benefits though!

Of course, you’ll only get all the perks of corporate videos if you work with experienced professionals that know how to make videos with an impact. It’s not an easy feat, I’ll tell you. There are mistakes waiting to be made in each step of the way and only a detailed process can get your video to a good finish.

The years of experience we have at Yum Yum Videos have taught us where those traps are and how to avoid them. Working with companies like Walmart, Fox, McKesson and hundreds of others have helped us refine a production procedure that ensures the final quality of the company video. Of all the things we’ve learned from our activities, these are the things you should keep an eye on while your video is in development.

It all starts with a great script

The explainer video company you choose has to make sure that it understands you and your brand. It has the tough job of finding a unique voice that can appeal to your target audience. And it has to produce a video that’s fun, memorable and dynamic enough to keep the interest of the people watching. All of that is only possible when you start with a solid script.

There are several tips and guidelines you can follow to make sure the script is actually good. You can find that information detailed in our free ebook “How To Write An Explainer Video Script”. But if you’re looking for a brief summary, then here it is. A great script has 3 main elements:

A good structure. Your message has to be direct and logical. It doesn’t have to leave space for misunderstandings or double meanings. You have to follow a narrative that goes from point A to B without distractions. Basically, you’re telling a story that’s appealing and engaging to your target audience.

A solution. People aren’t interested in who you are as a brand. They are interested in what you have to give them to improve their lives. Make that solution the focus of your explainer video because that’s what your audience is more likely to retain.

A dynamic pace. Editing has to be eye catching and flow smoothly. Characters have to be relatable and charismatic. The narrator has to convey emotion. Being boring is one of the capital sins your video can’t afford to make.

At Yum Yum we like to involve our clients in all of the stages of the process (especially in the early ones) because their input is key to get the tone right. Make sure you get involved. It’s your video after all and no one knows your brand better than you.

Customization is what will set you apart

If you go and check several examples of explainer videos, you’ll find that they seem very similar in certain industries (most digital marketing agencies surprisingly fall victims of this). That’s because they are ignoring another key of the best video explainers – customization. These contents are about different brands, so you’d think they’d look different from one another. But most of the time that’s the exception and not the rule. Watch this video for a better picture:

Such a scenario makes customization all the more important. That’s because tailoring the content gets your brand to the forefront, makes the video yours, and turns the video into a more memorable experience against a backdrop of forgettable lookalikes and wannabes. When something is developed with your company in mind, it should be impossible for it to look like any other brand.

If customization is that powerful, you may be wondering why most companies aren’t betting on it. There are multiple answers to that. Some companies aren’t aware of how important it actually is. Others prefer to save money and use video templates to create their corporate videos – thus ending up with video snippets that are used in tons of other videos. Finally, there are brands that trust the wrong people with the video development process.

What you should take away from this is that you have to find your voice and stand out. Sure, it’ll probably cost you a little more but don’t see these videos as expenses but rather as investments. Given the benefits you already know about them, it’s impossible not to see them as marketing materials that will return what you invest in developing them.

Don’t settle for anything less than the highest of quality

With the ubiquitous presence of video in our daily lives, any company interested in making a splash with its videos has to be up to the challenge. The bar has been raised and audiences aren’t interested in good videos anymore – they want great! That leaves you with one choice: either you make an ok video that gets quickly forgotten or go all in and swing for a home run. Watch Freshtunes’ video as an example of this:

Low quality animations or inferior character design is now discarded as trash. That context pushed high quality videos from luxury items to must-have cornerstones of any modern marketing strategy. Consider that when assigning your video a budget. High quality and customization will have a price but it’ll be one worth paying for.

How can you be sure of that? By working with the best, obviously! Only a company with talented designers, animators, narrators and writers will be able to provide a video with enough power to wow your audience. The good news is you don’t even need to spend that much to get that. There are multiple explainer video companies out there with accessible prices like the ones we offer you. Be sure to look for them! (We are one of them! Contact us!)

The journey begins with the finished video

When you get your finished video, it’s impossible not to feel excited. After a couple of months work you finally have the thing you were aiming for! Then comes the presentation to the whole company, uploading it to YouTube, Vimeo and the like, and sit down to wait for the results to arrive, right? Wrong!

The finished video is just the start of a series of actions around it. Sure, you have to show it to your colleagues, upload it to YouTube and embed it on your website. But you have to actively promote it to get the most out of it. As with everything in digital marketing, you don’t wait – you move forward. You use the animated video to create ads, use it to explain your advantages in discussion groups, put it in landing pages for your services and so on.

You’ll have paid good money for a great marketing piece – will you really let it just lay dormant? I didn’t think so! Squeeze it as much as you can, get it out in the world, display it oh-so-proudly wherever you can. That video is now an integral part of your brand so you’d better start using it as such.

Your video will be as good as the people making it

One final piece of advice. The video production industry is filled with people that do a good job and people that are only in it for the money. You know what you should be looking for – the ones that do a great job! In the end, the subtitle says it all: your video will be as good as the professionals making it. When shopping around for them, be sure you check all the options before deciding which one is the perfect choice for you.

After all you have read until now, you’ve surely realized that at Yum Yum we know a little thing or two about all the explainer video world. That’s why we’d like to hear you out. If you are considering jumping on board of the company video ship, then be sure to remember all of our suggestions and to clear all your doubts before you do so. Do some extra research, ask the experts, read more valuable resources.

But the most important thing of all: judge the video development companies for what they can do, not for what they can promise. It’s easy to throw promises up in the air. What’s truly hard is to keep them. You can make sure a company fulfills theirs by checking their online portfolio and by taking a look at their testimonials. After all, when it comes down to creating memorable videos, you want the guys that have years of experience and the respect of their colleagues to be on your side, don’t you?